The Louie Recap: "Barney/Never"

Episode six of Louie's third season returns to the couplet form, in this case a pair of dreamlike vignettes during which an old man has left Louie's life and a young man enters it. In each case, Louie hazards a good deed, and one of them actually goes unpunished.

"Barney" opens with Louie tramping the grounds of a cemetery. Shot in black and white, under overcast skies, to a background of lugubrious horn music, we're looking at a kaddis waiting to happen (or a remake of the opening scene to the original Night of the Living Dead). Instead, Louie arrives at a freshly dug grave, the only mourner in attendance until he's joined by Robin—Williams, a casting coup that's not only stunty but spot-on, as the bearded, lumbering comic these days looks every bit the Borsht Belt alter kocker.

They stand mute over the hole in the ground, and against the gloomy New York winterscape like a couple of characters in a Ben Katchor comic strip, barely acknowledging each other, and then go their separate ways, only to re-meet moments later in a nearby coffee shop where Robin sits down in Louie's booth and the reminiscing begins. Turns out the dead guy, Barney, was Robin's ex-wife's brother-in-law and, as the owner of a comedy club, Louie's sometime employer. After a couple of laconic volleys, attempts at respectful reminiscence, they slowly realize that neither is there out of love, Louie finally confessing, "I'm pretty sure that Barney was the biggest piece of shit I ever knew," and Robin agreeing, "He was a prick and an asshole." Louie testifies that he stiffed the performers in his club, Robin countering that the deceased borrowed and never repaid a half-million-dollar loan from him. In fact, they both came to pay their respects, such as they are, simply because they were sure that Barney's death would go unacknowledged.

When it turns out that the two men have one specific memory of Barney in common—his desperate attempts to get people to like them, typically by (unsuccessfully) cajoling them to join him at Sweet Charity, his favorite strip club—they decide, as an act as much of curiosity as tribute, to visit the joint, where—cue O'Henry-esque twist—the news of Barney's death is met with tearful, aggrieved shock by the staff.

Robin and Louie exit the club in stitches—presumably by the ironic revelation that even the most roundly hated man on the planet has people who love him, and sometimes they wear G-strings and shake their asses to Sister Christian. The experience hasn't improved their opinion of Barney, but it paid off their grudging, dour efforts at a mitzvah with a good laugh and a story to tell for the rest of their lives. With that, they part with a promise to visit the grave of whoever of them dies first.

Part two of the episode is in full color, but the sadness is every bit as profound. After picking daughter Lily (Hadley Delany) up from school, Louie is approached by a frantic fellow parent. C.K. wastes no time getting to the weird as the woman asks if he can watch her son, Never, while she goes to a consultation with a doctor—turns out she's having elective surgery to have her vagina removed. And if that seems like a gratuitously weird plot point, it's redeemed somewhat when he, and we, realize that's not the loopiest thing about her.

Louie agrees to help out, well, because he's Louie and can't help trying to do the right thing, to be a beacon of kindness in this cruel, cruel world (and also because it would be too idiosyncratic and clipped even for this show if he simply declined and walked away as fast as he could). As she rushes to catch a cab, she issues a couple of guidelines for the care of her spawn—that she never says no to him and that he doesn't eat anything with carbon because, she insists, "It's all from China." Oh, boy.

Turns out the smart one here is Lily, who balks at the idea of a playdate with creepy Never. As Louie turns to persuade her of the rightness of his gesture, Never pushes a baby stroller into an intersection, causing a multi-vehicle collision that includes a banged-up chemical tanker, whose driver (Artie Lange) runs away screaming. It's a strikingly big (and expensive-looking) scene for this show and, like "Barney," brings to mind cartoon/comic book exposition.

Finally arriving at his apartment, Louie has no idea what to do with this amalgam of Lord Fauntleroy and Chucky. Naturally, Never is hungry, so he and Louie stare into the fridge in search of something he can eat. According to his mom, Never says, every option they consider will kill him. Except one: raw ground beef, served in a bowl. (For dramatic license, we're apparently overlooking e. coli and the fact that there's carbon in beef.)

For my money, the best scene in the episode is the next one, where Louie gets a call from his agent, Doug. He's played by Edward Gelbinovich, who's 22 but looks 16. He sits, besuited, in the back of a town car with a hot Asian chick as he tells Louie, in a clipped, soul-dead voice, that he's got to do a phone interview with a couple of shock jocks in Kansas City, as ticket sales for his upcoming gig there are weak. As a joke-by-casting about talent agents, it tells itself, but it's almost more plausible to believe that Louis C.K. did it just for its sheer absurdity. Louie's resistant, claiming that he never does well in K.C. and that he loathes talking with shock jocks. But Doug finally persuades him to do it, then hangs up his phone, glancing at his girl and intoning with all the world-weariness of a man thrice his age, "Uggh, these guys...." Give this guy his own show!

The chaos continues Louie's living room, as Never rolls up a floor rug and tosses it out the window, where it's immediately glommed with by a couple of passersby. (Okay, now we're in Abott and Costello territory.) Louie, desperate for a time-killing activity for the little monster, suggest watching TV. Nope, says Never, mom says it's "inappropriate." But he would like a bath—specifically, he'd like Louie to give him a bath. Now it's Louie who plays the "inappropriate" card. Never finally agrees to give himself a bath, during which Louie endures his radio phoner. After being assaulted for a couple of minutes with the jock's incessant sound effects, cacophony of inane banter, and mumbled inane questions, Louie finally releases the tension of his day by telling them that theirs is a "dumb" city, probably the worst in North America. His spite-soaked candor does the trick, as the line goes quiet and the jocks hang up.

That nightmare over, Louie turns to a new one, as he finds Never sitting in now-chocolate-brown bathwater, after an explosion of diarrhea.

Having finally gotten Never and the bathroom cleaned up, Louie sits on the couch with the boy. His aggravation aside, he can't help being compassionate. (For all the infamous, scabrous putdowns of children, especially his own, that have been part of his standup act, C.K, especially in his TV-dad guise, is also unfailingly sensitive to the needs of kids.) Their long, long day nearly over, Louie makes himself available to Never should he ever want to talk about anything. Never doesn't understand why he'd ever want to talk to this guy again, but then admits that his mom doesn't like him, while at the same time assuring him that anything he does is okay as long as he loves himself...which has got to be the mother, so to speak, of mixed parental messages.
Louie, his diplomatic mien having been worn down to nothing by now, tells him that his behavior is not okay, and that he can tell his mother he said so.

Louie's subdued yet quixotic determination to do the right thing, his allegiance to the idea of doing one's part to add to the cumulative kindness of this cold, cold world, is in full flower here, in two elegies of a sort—one a mourning for a miserable prick, one for a stillborn childhood. "Barney/Never" is a particularly silly-yet-profound example of Louie's inimitability, onethat's got me hoping C.K. never starts making too much sense.